Maymont Japanese Gardens, September 1st

So I posted earlier on photos from the Italian gardens for when I went to Maymont at the first of the month. This is the second part of the photos.
This is my favorite part, most definitely.
So I am not sure if I said anything about the hurricane or not in the post before but some trees did fall down around the park. Lucky, non actually fell down in the Japanese gardens retaining it! thank god, I'd die.



So I took a different path then I usually do to get down to the Japanese gardens. It's on the East side of the park I believe.



So, if you go to the park during the day on a week day (this case Thursday around 1pm), there is virtually no one there compared to the weekend. The best time and peaceful time to go with out kids running around haha









So, I like Bald cypress trees, they are pretty awesome. Just saying. They are a wetland tree and they are not that common at all in the city of Richmond or around the James River at least by the city. They had them brought in obviously. I did hear that there is a random cypress tree in someones back yard around Strawberry street and it is one of the biggest ones this far north period.

















I love this bridge, love it. I want one on my pond or small water hole if I get one.









Years ago this is what it looked like below....









This bridge the other weekend had two people on it giving each other their vows. It was a nice wedding and it was a perfect day. One day I might have a wedding like that....maybe



The zen area that they have renovated had be outlined with bamboo that holds in some new sand that is well kept. Rocks are perfectly placed...has a calm appeal to it.











the grotto has been fixed up and now has running water from the top of it. This has had some much work put back into it and looks great.



they also fixed this up in front of the grotto and now actually has water in it and new plants. It  is great with what they did with the walking area.









This is a better view of the new "zen" area.

400th!

Hey everyone! It has been a little while since I did a post. I know I have yet put up the photos from the Japanese Garden but I will swear that I will do it some time this weekend!
So this post marks the 400th post that I have made on this blog! In the past 19.5 months that this blog has been operational, I have averaged about 20.5 posts a month. I know that I have not been posting that much this year as last but I think that was because I made more post about news and other things like that and I have moved more to in not complete of my life, my interests and of course photos and of my travels. I rather it be this way because I don't want to be a news blog. You can google the news haha, but for me you have to come here.
Any who, I still have photos to post for everyone that I have and after I work today doing some landscaping I will perhaps start on that post. Unless I decide to read my book like I know I should, it depends
I am planning on taking a lot of fall photos this year. I will be traveling to the mountains, with girl friend or not, and take a lot of shots. I'm excited to be waking up in some chilly mountain morning weather. I want that camp fire smell and that nice relax feeling of nature and the sound of a campground at night rather then a TV. I'm telling you, if you have not camped, please do for the experience and the essence of nature. I don't care if you don't want a tent, you can go and sleep in a camper but at least spend the time outside if your camping and soak it in. Gosh I can't wait!
If no one can go in my family or not even my friends I will at the least, LEAST, go for a day by myself. This is important everyone, if you plan on going into nature by yourself, whether it be in the mountains, a random island in the middle of some water, kayaking on a river etc, please and I really mean DO IT. Tell some one where you are going and when and an estimate of when you will be coming back. It helps if you have a cell phone as well but if you are going to a place where there is not service or you don't want to get it wet you GOTTA tell someone where you are going. Nature is complete unpredictable and that is what makes in nature and it is natural. Things can happen that you never plan for. A Snake bite, tripping and going over a cliff and causing sever bone breaking. If you are a child you better be telling your parents where you are going at all times. The movie 127 hours I believe, I just watched the other weekend shows a classic example of not telling anyone where you are. Do it and if something happens it will save your life.
I will be taking a lot of photos again at maymont and other parks in the area as the temperature changes and the leaves change their cloaks to better suit the climate.
I think I might type more to hear and there as an update as what is going on and also I might start posting about places that I am looking into traveling to when I go to Japan. It is a trip that is still a go, and I am very excited for it. I am thinking about not working on a farm or a place that practices organic type of living. I was going to do that because they feed you and put you up for living there as you work 6 hours a day. I think I might just do my own traveling staying some some family's for a week in certain places in the country including Tokyo and Kyoto. I am going to look into maybe staying somewhere that is more rural, to get that farming feeling still and not all the city clutter, and perhaps near a mountain where I can enjoy a hike or a relaxing spot on the beach or river gorge. You never know what I might go with but I know that I at least better start plotting where I will go so I can start getting into the details of the trip and booking places and printing maps off so I know here to go and what restaurants I wanna eat at. There are already places that I want to eat at and also shop. Whether I actually shop or not I am not sure because I believe that I will have to ship everything I get over there back. I think I might get a tea cup when I am over there. that has been a thing that I have been looking for. Some thing that might be hand made or just look hand made. Nothing like a tea cup found in any store over here in America but something that is special. In that small corner shop that has to right shade of color on it and tucked behind other things. A cup that has a character and something that attracts me. I have been wanting something like that. Heck I might find a set over there and might grab that as a gift to myself when I can move out after the trip. (Who knows when I can move out after this trip since this isn't a cheap trip lol).
Anyways, all things that you can look forward for the next 100 posts and beyond. I am sure there will me a magical post on the 2nd anniversary of this blog as well.
haha.
Also I have been thinking about starting a picture of the day and a description about it, something that I have been thinking about and I think I tried it before but I was overwhelmed with other things. I think if I keep it short and stuff it will be great. I'll probably make a link at the top of the side panel that goes to the most recent  shot of the day. If I do it o start it, it wont be right away but I will be working on the idea.
Well, it is about time for my to get ready and head out to make some extra money to help pay for gas and the new car. I don't mind landscaping, I really don't. I would love to work at a gardens, I really would.
Have a great rest of the weekend.

New computer!!

So my new computer just came in  early. It is a Toshiba, first time I got a computer other then a Gateway haha. The size and the power of it should suffice for a long time. The keyboard will have to take some getting use to though. I am already having a problem typing as is but it will come easier as time goes on I hope. This has a more full keyboard. I have a numeric key pad on the right side which will help for typing numbers or using alt codes which I have been using a lot recently for the blog and other tasks.
I hope to get the rest of the Maymont photos up soon. I still have to transfer all the data to this computer that was on my old one. I will take a while and will be annoying to do so but hey its got be done indeed.
I'm watching Man Vs. Wild right now off of Netflix. Using up as much of the free trial that I have left before I have to cancel it. I got about 7-8 days left on it unfortunately.
It distracts me from school work and blog work though haha.
I will probably be updating again soon but right now I have to update my other blogs now with out the need of my old files.
So I will post again in a day or so!

Maymont Italian Gardens Last week

So last week on Thursday I think it was I left work early so that I could catch up on my reading for class and also get some photography in. I headed to Maymont and hung around the Japanese Gardens for a long time and also lots of other parts of the park. I want to share some of the photos from the Italian Gardens first since I rather split the Japanese gardens and this into two (it would be 50+ photos if I did both)
Anyways I read about 25 pages when I was there which was no where near the amount that I wanted to read. A beautiful park that is quite and lush full of great things to look at distracts my minds eye.
The sounds of animals flicking leaves to the side in search of food, birds chirping and kids giggling. That was Maymont park. I am glad that it wasn't crowded at all on Thursday. Everyone was still preoccupied with the "hurricane" that passed through. Only an hour before I got to the park did I find out that power had returned to my house.
Getting out of the house, Power or not, is the thing to do :)
Anyways on with some photos which you probably came for haha
Oh wait, did I mention that the book that I was reading was Walden by Thoreau? It is about his ideas and experiences about moving out to Walden Pond and living there for two years and two months. It defeated the purpose of me reading about experiences with nature while I was sitting out side for hours in nature...that is why I was distracted from reading the book.

So one of the paths that leads from the road that goes to the mansion, that heads to the Italian Gardens is nothing but Hibiscus. Our Hibiscus and my girl friends mother's has already bloomed but here they were open for anything to admire it's color and beauty.


















Now the plants that you see above and below were infested with butterflies. When I walked to the gazebo a cloud of butterflies had lifted into the air and fluttered around me before descending back to their flower.









Not only was it the flowers above that I mentioned but a lot of the butterflies loved tons of the flowers that were around. I love the photo below because I managed to get two different insects in one shot.





When I got the the gardnes part I did see a pair of people that were getting some photography down while she was in a nice gown. It wasn't a wedding dress so I am not sure what it was for.



Many people do come here to get photos done of themselves in their dresses or suits. A lot of people in wedding gowns have gotten their pictures done in front of flowers and the fountains. Also at these gardens, a ton of weddings happen to take place. They usually are not that large of weddings and every time I have seen it happen it was always of a clear sky; hope I get that lucky haha.

Even though that the summer is drawing to a close, there are still roses to be seen there and many other flowers. Before the leaves start to fall, you should run back for your last look at they flowers before the fall.







:)

The loss of light: Post Hurricane Irene thoughts

So I got a call today from my father while I was at my internship about getting power back out our home. I now know that I don't need to find anywhere to take a shower and such.
But I was actually going to express my experience without the power the last 5 days this week.

So I had lost power at about 3:30PM on Saturday during the Hurricane. Most people spent the night to the following morning without power before they pulled out their generators or maybe people already had them running during the storm anticipating the power outages. I had a good feeling that we were going to lose the power but I wasn't sure when.
It is always a rare experiences where people are forced to create light inside their homes with a candle, flashlights, or lanterns. This past week I understood how much our society depends on electricity (I need it to run water since I am on a well) and running water. My father and I left the house around 6:30am on Sunday morning to find a warm breakfast, just something like some biscuits or so but everywhere was out of power and closed. We ended up at a gas station really close to where we lived and it still had power an was selling gas. There was at least one car waiting behind another at every pump there filling their cars and about three of their own gas jugs probably for their generators. My father waited for about thirty minutes just for a cup of coffee and he said it wasn't worth the wait haha. That gas station later that day was out of most of the breakfast foods (honey buns and etc.) from the scourging people looking for food.
Many people depend on the necessities of fossil fuels and electricity along with the obvious one; food.
When you lose power inside the house it makes you take a step back and look outside for something to do. On Sunday and Monday's case a lot of people were cleaning up the debris from the storm, it took my family about half of Sunday to get it up since it was minimal.
With no electricity there was no T.V. or Internet so I turned to going outside for something to do which I am completely fine by since I do a tone outside already and I am a Eagle Scout. I took the bike out which I hadn't for a very long time and I did in the following mornings rather then my usual schedule of waking up and turning on my laptop to post on my blogs. I also went Kayaking later Sunday which it was a fantastic day to go out and enjoy the earths beauty and what mother nature has brought us. I wish a lot of people got outside during their time of no power to enjoy what is out there and not always being couped up inside slaving over reality-T.V. and other shows. You need to experience what is waiting for you rather watching someones Else's experiences on the tube. It is something that I believe is a must for anyone. You should be tied down to fossil fuels to power your house all the time and electricity.
Now, for people who went out to buy generators because they couldn't last a few days without power is really tied down hard, I can understand the people that need to run health equipment or other things that are absolute need for their survival like elderly people or handicap people but many other people can survive without it and it is a true experience to just stop and have everything off.
I managed to get by fine without power or water for the last week since the most essential things for survival is food, water and clothing and perhaps some source of heat  (fire). I had a roof over my head, we had matches and an grill outside to create a fire to cook food if needed be. Water, as for water we had stocked up on bottles of water and also I have a creek down the hill that we can use to flush the toilets and such. It makes life a lot more simpler without having electricity. There is less stress and it doesn't feel like that I have a anchor tied to me. I had a sense of liberation from me. I turned from outside to inside pretty fast and it makes you truly appreciate nature when you get out there. It is truly something amazing.
It almost was like camping but rather a tent we had a house. This is how it felt when I slept in my bed with my window open bringing in cool breezes to invigorate me. Reading by candle light was interesting in it's own as well. It is hard to do being that our eyes now are so use to a light bulb light sources rather then the small light flow from a single or a few candles lit. It made my eyes droop when I tried to read text in that dim of light in my room. In the end I never got any reading done and I am still behind on it.
We lost everything in our fridge and I did have to improvise for what I had to eat which was fine. I have a disease that I need vast quantities of water if I don't have my medication (which I always have) so I could have been in some trouble.
Now, without the electricity, I had no way really to post on my blogs at all (unless I left home for school and post online there). So when I woke up in the morning, rather then feeling that need to post online and that feeling of responsibility and that habit of always doing it just all of a sudden stopping, it is quite sudden. I want everyone to know that just because of the lose of power/internet/T.V./water and such it doesn't mean you have to put a hold on your life. You have tons of doors open for things to do when electricity is on but without it there is a whole world out there that you can find and immerse yourself into. That world will never leave, but I hope that many people also understand the importance of how dependent our society and economy is on the fact we have electricity and fossil fuels creating it. In this entire passage, I am not saying that electricity and fossil fuels are bad (ok, well we really need to change the dependence of fossil fuels). What I am saying is that it is wise to understand that there is a world out there that is super vast and that you can dive in without the need of electricity at all. I am also saying that we see how much electricity influences us now and watching people freaking out about not having power and scrambling for fuel and generators is crazy. Panic can happen when things like this happen.
I also understand that as the generations continue, the more they rely on power then anything. The conveniences of having that electricity there ready to power anything that you WANT not really need to survive. I checked Facebook on my phone while I still had a charge and watched all the status that popped up during the outages about how they said it sucked without power and that Dominion (our power company in the area) wasn't doing there job as if that person was a priority over hospitals or traffic lights.It was mostly the younger crowd that had these statuses about the power and how they had nothing to do. There is so much to do without power, pick up a book read, or paint, take a walk or bike. When the power is out I feel that it can really bring out some peoples creativity. I know on Saturday during the storm my girlfriend had continued and finished her painting that she had started with me and they had power and never lost it during the entire time. I just feel that people almost can't live without the T.V. for a few hours but I know she is good haha.
Anyways I will go on with my week, I just wanted to express that you can't be inside all the time, get out and live. Please :D
So, without the electricity and the windows open at home I wake up typically the same time in the morning that I would if I went camping. 6:30AM pretty much. That is early to get ready for me in the morning and also probably another thing that would wake me up and keep me up was the loud generators in the neighborhood that were running all night and into the morning that would wake anyone up with their windows down. I would get up and go downstairs to get a drink and a muffin for breakfast and then I would go find some clothes and still have some time before I need to leave for school/work. I would take the bike out for a ride for about half an hour. I tell you, getting up in the morning and going for a walk or a bike ride is the best experiences. They say when you sleep and awake in the morning that you die and have a rebirth every time. You awake from your slumber and become more aware of what happens out there and I think ti is always key for people to get up early and to experience this. It is also when outside becomes alive, with the hustle and bustle of the animals and such.
Anyways, I would have to go to school after I got my things together.
My nights were short after I got home and it turned dark. I was to tired to stay up and read under the candle flame as it drained me out. With out electricity we carved more time into our nights and take back our sun light the artificial way. It is an interesting thought though. Farmers years ago before electricity was so plentiful had early mornings and early evenings but it seams to be the opposite these days.
I wont lie, I enjoyed these past few days and somewhere back in my head I wish I didn't get that call about having power back on at home. I can live a bit longer without, I am not sure about not having running water though that was getting to me since I had to rely on others for showers and such. It was a new way of living and I can probably tell you once I have my own place I do not think that I will still get my own generator just in case another storm comes my way. It is nice going back to the 17th century from time to time. In a few years though who knows if they start building houses that have built in generators or such or all homes have some kind of special solar-panel shingles on the roof or paneling on the side of the house. We are moving fast in technology and to what is in the future, that I will no deny but I never think we should ever forget that one day something could happen and all of it can go away. A single storm did this for a few days who knows that is out there that could cause total blackness.
It makes me think that primal living should me a mandatory class and how to live outdoors type of class should be mandatory in the public school system maybe tied into health/P.E. class. One day something could happen and there will be billions of people out there that are lost in the darkness not knowing what to do for their own survival or for their loved ones.
I think that is all I have to say about that for now, after a long rambling probably. Sorry about that but it is a lot to think about. I will probably go home tonight and watch Netflix off my Wii and I am not being a hypocrite or anything because I am aware of what could happen one day and that I am aware of the beauty  that nature has to offer and it is so much else that she can offer to all of us.
Plus I lost a week of time on my 1 month free Netflix trial which is depressing haha. I have to read a lot tonight anyways. Also I will have a meal at home tonight for once, how nice with my family in the light that we have created as a society.
Good night!